Attachment Organization and Vulnerability to Loss, Separation, and Abuse in Disturbed Adolescents

The publication of “Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves” (Bowlby, 1944) was an important event in the history of psychoanalytic thinking about the relationship of trauma to psychopathology. In this study Bowlby selected a group of 44 “affectionless characters” showing serious difficulties in interpersonal relations. The life histories showed that 12 had been separated from their mothers in infancy or early childhood, a much higher proportion than in the rest of the thieves. The results of this study directed attention to the role of actual adverse family experiences in the determination of psychopathology and made clear Bowlby’s belief that a range of traumatic early experiences (such as maternal deprivation and parental loss), which have always had etiological connotations in psychoanalysis, can be approached in terms of systematic investigation. This chapter is but one example that attachment researchers are meeting the challenge of Bowlby’s approach.